I think it’s in a way to try and damage DJI. If it was not they would work with the 99% market leader to get some systems in place.
Nah. Hanlan's Razor clearly applies;
never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. (Or incompetence).
From earlier discussions on this, I think the key problem is that, for whatever reason, the CAA decided that they would not simply copy the EU standard verbatim (yes, Brexit, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have just stuck with the same specs.) and do their own subtly different thing. That then meant they the UK would need to independently ratify each model of the drone and assign the UK-specific version of the C-Mark which, in turn, requires a rather specific type of testing facility. Big surprise; this turns out to be rather a niche thing and the companies that operate such testing facilities seem to have rebuffed the CAA because it wasn't worth their time and effort.
If that's correct, then that kind of leaves the CAA up the poverbial creek without a paddle. They are obliged by UK law to implement this, don't have the resources, skills, or equipment, to do it in-house, and the third party testing facilities in the UK (and maybe the EU as well since they seem to be in a similar position) are just not interested in doing the necessary testing upon which all this hangs. Or maybe they
are prepared to do it, but their costs are prohibitive and there is a bun fight between vendors and governments about who pays for what - which, if anything, would favour the larger vendors like DJI who could more readily afford to pay than smaller vendors and startups in the UAV marketplace - including vendors of things like large crop-spraying drones and the like.
Ultimately, I think this is probably a quite well-intentioned effort by EU+UK politicians (it was done pre-Brexit) and civil servants to standardise and make things better, but they enacted it before it was fully baked and some rather important details were yet to be nailed down. That has left the CAA, EASA, and the vendors trying to pick up the pieces and find a compromise solution that will work within legislation that has already been put into place, but are ultimately at the mercy of third party testing facilities they have no control over.
At this point, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Legacy was extended indefinitely and drones with a C-Mark don't appear for several more years, if ever. I'm actually fine with that. It's not the C-Mark that benefits drone pilots; it's the standardisation of competencies and flying restrictions that enables pilots from one country to fly without having to check laws or acquire new permits across most of Western Europe. We don't need testing facilities or specific stickers on our drones for that, we just need governments to actually comply with the laws set by the EU (and grandfathered in post-Brexit by the UK) and adhere to the common set of regulations that *should* already be in force EU+UK-wide.
